


Nature Versus Nurture

by Loki Sky-Traveler (dragonmactir)



Category: Thor (Movies)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:14:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26396983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonmactir/pseuds/Loki%20Sky-Traveler
Summary: The prequel to The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul (Of a God), this takes place roughly 11,880,000 Earth years ago when Loki first started school.  A piece that explores the question of whether Loki was simply born to be a wild child rebel, whether he was forged into that role by his rearing, or whether a combination of nature and nurture created a perfect storm of psyche.
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

“As you can plainly see, Your Majesty, we have the finest facilities of any educational center in the multiverse. Everything is completely up-to-date, we’ve spared no expense when it comes to our students’ quality of education and well-being.” Loki wondered if the administrator was always so obsequious, or only when facing the King of Asgard. Granted, most everyone spoke to him in that servile way.

Odin’s only response was a grunt, indicating that he simply wasn’t impressed. Odin wasn’t easily impressed, so that was hardly surprising, but the gleaming campus of the Imperial Academy of the Magical Arts was pretty damned impressive, really. It wasn’t golden, but it reminded Loki a lot of Odinhall, the royal palace. It had… charisma. And scale.

Loki Odinson had just recently turned sixty-five, which in Asgardian years was the proper age to start school. As such, he took his scholastic aptitude test to find out what sort of academic program he was best suited to, and it was discovered that he had a very high IQ and a strong magical aptitude. This wasn’t uncommon among gods, but his magical aptitude was such that his guidance counselor suggested magic-based education. With a great deal of grumbling and a lot of prodding from Queen Frigga, Odin accepted the recommendation. Receiving acceptance from IAMA was a big deal, however, even for the son of the King. It was the single most prestigious school of magical education in the entire cosmos, and no one in the direct royal line had ever before attended, although a great-grandfather some generations back on Frigga’s side had been an alumnus. Loki was justifiably proud of himself, even though his older brother Thor made it sound very much as though it were a school of sideshow freaks, and his father made it sound not much better.

“We offer the finest curriculum both magical and academic of any school in the cosmos,” the administrator was saying. “Nowhere will your son have a finer –”

“That’s all well and good, but I want him enrolled in the Battlemage program,” Odin said, and the administrator’s jaw dropped. Frigga’s hands, resting on Loki’s shoulders, gripped him tightly.

“M-m-m-my King… most students do not begin the Battlemage program in the First Form. It is very strenuous, you understand –”

“I don’t want my son growing up to be some swotty little Nancy-boy,” Odin said. “He will learn to fight. Thor was enrolled in the Warriors program from the First Form, let Loki be enrolled in the Battlemage program, if that is all you have.”

“Husband, there is a difference in the training of Warriors and Battlemages,” Frigga said quietly. “The discipline –”

“—Will be good for the boy. You let him have far too free a hand, my dear. He’s running quite wild.”

Frigga squeezed Loki’s shoulders tighter and subsided into silence. Loki felt slightly ill. He thought he was getting away from his father’s war machine by coming here. Asgardian males were expected to fight, it was how you found glory as a god, but he thought he would be happier with a quieter, less dangerous lifestyle. His brother called him a coward.

“Well, of course we will mark him down for the Battlemage program immediately,” the administrator said, stuttering slightly. “I am sure he will excel.”

“Certainly he will,” Odin said. “He is my son.”

The administrator’s eyes got huge. “O-o-of course, my liege. I meant no offense.”

“Term starts tomorrow?” Odin said.

“Officially, Your Majesty. We use the day today to allow our First Form students to familiarize themselves with the campus. Guided tours are given so that they have some sense of where their classes are located come the morrow.”

“Fine. Be about it, then. Come, Thor. Frigga.” And Odin turned upon his heel, his golden cape swishing about him, and strode briskly away. Thor followed along behind like a puppy, sparing one backward glance at his brother, which was more than Odin gave him. Frigga lingered.

“Be brave, my son,” she whispered to him, squeezing his shoulders again. “We will see you for Wintersend.”

And then she, too, was gone.

The administrator cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Well. Er… as you are… joining the Battlemage program, you will be assigned an Upperclassman from the program as a mentor. They will take you on the traditional tour of the campus. Wait right here. They will be along for you shortly.”

And he fled with little regard for dignity, leaving Loki completely alone.

Loki stood quietly, trying not to fidget, trying not to think. Trying not to feel afraid. He had wanted to come here, where he thought he would be out from under his brother’s golden shadow and his father’s grand legacy, a place where he could safely excel, but now he had strong misgivings. He had never felt so lonely in his young life.

He stood there for a long time, feeling very cold despite the mid-morning warmth of the sunshine, when a sudden voice behind him made him jump. Despite his keen senses, he hadn’t heard the young man approach him at all. Perhaps he was just too lost in himself to hear footsteps.

“Battlemage.”

Loki spun to face a tall, rather burly Upperclassman who was instantly recognizable as a Vanir. Gods from Vanaheim most often appeared indistinguishable to gods from Asgard, but every now and then there were those among them who were… different. This one had skin as dark as cocoa, a great rarity among gods. Loki began to feel slightly better. Asgardians did not often throw up “different” types, being fairly uniformly fair-skinned, blond-haired, and blue-eyed. His own black hair and green eyes were so rare that he was the only Aesir (Asgardian) known to have them, but this young god probably had to deal with prejudice based on his appearance, too. Loki wondered if anyone had ever called him ill-favored. He himself was often called that, and worse things.

“Are you… talking to me?” he said, trying not to stammer.

The young god nodded, a single slow dip of the head. He had orange eyes, and stared into some middle distance as though he could see straight through Loki. Loki noticed that he wore a small golden pin on his school uniform; crossed swords with sparks or stars cascading out of the tips.

“I am to be your mentor. Follow me.”

Loki had to trot to keep up with the tall young god’s long strides. He took him on a whirlwind and rather dismissive tour of the school and grounds, then asked in the same very flat voice whether there were any questions. Loki had one.

“What is your name?”

“We have no names here. We are all Battlemage,” the young god said, still staring straight through Loki.

“Oh,” Loki said, deflating somewhat. “That’s… strange.”

“You will learn. Come, you must receive your uniform.”

He led him to a small building where Loki was outfitted with the school uniform of black leather boots, black trousers, a beige tunic, and a red-brown sash. The attendant pinned something just below his collar. Loki looked down. It was a golden pin, depicting crossed swords, with a cascade of stars. Loki reached up and touched it nervously.

“The mark of the Battlemage?” he said, trying for a smile. His mentor did not smile back. Neither did the attendant.

“You will learn, also, that speaking out of turn is forbidden,” his mentor said, though he did not seem remotely perturbed. “Term has not started, or you would be punished.”

“Punished how?” Loki said, his weak smile falling away.

The young god shook his head slowly. “The intention of the program is to instill in us a rigid sense of discipline. They brook no excuses. My advice to you as your mentor is that you try very hard not to find out.”

“I have a proper question now, if I may ask it,” Loki said in a small voice.

The young god nodded, again one slow dip of the head.

“What are they going to do to me here?”

“They are going to turn you into an Imperial Battlemage, if they can,” the young god said. “If they cannot, they will send you home. Many do not make it.”  
Loki pictured the disgrace he would see on his father’s face if he were sent home unsuccessful. The thought made his stomach churn.

“Is it really hard?” he asked.

“Academically, it is no different than the program any other IAMA student receives,” the young god said. “Physically and in terms of discipline… it is quite challenging.”

Loki took a deep breath. It was shaky as he let it out. “I can handle it.”

The young god nodded again. “I hope for your sake that you can. It is nearly time for dinner. A good test of your memory will be for you to find your way to the mess hall unaccompanied. I will find you if you have need of me. Goodbye, Battlemage. Good fortune to you.”

And then, once again, Loki was left quite alone.

The mess hall wasn’t terribly distant, so it wasn’t all that difficult to find, and soon he stood in line with the other students. He grabbed a tray and held it out to the attendant behind the counter when it was his turn for food.

“Battlemage, eh? You get the special rations,” the surly-looking god said, and pulled a bowl from a stack of same and plunked it on Loki’s tray. He then took a ladle and dug it into a large pot of greyish porridge and plopped a rather stingy portion into the bowl. Loki looked up at him.

“Want to say something, Battlemage?” the god said, in clear challenge.

Loki was a quick learner. He looked down at the bowl of dismal porridge and moved along.

“Enjoy it.”

Loki started, almost dropping his tray. The dark young god was back, suddenly appearing at Loki’s shoulder as silently as though he had simply appeared there.

_“How?”_ Loki said in a whisper.

“You have to try. You won’t be eating anything else until you go home for the Wintersend holiday. And you only get it once a day.”

“Once a day?” Loki said, then clipped his teeth shut tight. “This is what they call discipline, then?”

“Part of it,” the young god said. “As you progress, you will earn… ‘comforts.’ Eventually, you may even earn breakfast and supper.”

“Wow. I look forward to it.”

“Remember: no talking out of turn,” the young god said, and then he was gone again.

No talking. That was going to be hard. Loki didn’t like to imagine what punishments lay in store for him if he broke the prohibition against it. He found a table populated by other students bearing the Battlemage pin and they all ate in what he felt was a tense silence. They were mostly much older than him, but all but the very oldest seemed nervous and afraid. The oldest among them just seemed to sit with an invisible wall around them, unreachable.

There wasn’t much to do while waiting for night to fall, so Loki spent it trying to get a jump on his scheduled morning classes. He intended to make his father proud, no matter how frightened he was or how little his father made of magical education. Then around dusk a loud horn blew, making him start.

“That is the call to curfew.” It was his mysterious mentor again, appearing like magic out of nowhere. “You must go to the dormitories and present yourself to the Battlemage Prefect. Do not be late.”

“May I ask just one question?”

“You just did. You have time enough for one more, perhaps, if you feel it necessary.”

“How do you just appear like that? I’ve never heard of such magic.”

A faint smile, the first flicker of a facial expression, crossed the young god’s face for just a moment. “Translocation – appearing and disappearing and moving by magic – is very difficult. I am not as good a student of magic as they were hoping I would be when they accepted me to this school. I am, however, a very good fighter, which is why they have kept me here enrolled in the Battlemage program. I do not simply ‘appear.’ You simply do not see me coming.”

“But how do you know I need you?” Loki said. He was too late, however – the young god was already gone. Taking his warning to heart, Loki gathered his books and headed for the dormitories to present himself to the Battlemage Prefect for whatever lay ahead.


	2. Chapter 2

The Battlemage Prefect turned out to be a young Asgardian god who looked a lot like others of his type, being tall, brawny, fair-skinned, blond-haired, and blue-eyed. He also had a similarly expressionless look on his face, but he did not give Loki the impression of being able to see straight through him as did his mentor. He took command of the new Battlemage trainees, most of whom were several Forms older than Loki, and led them down a set of stone stairs to an area below where the regular students bunked. There the older Battlemage students awaited them. Two by two, they grabbed hold of the new trainees and dragged them each away.

“What’s happening? What are you doing? What’s going on here?” the chorus of frightened young voices echoed weirdly in the stone-built underground.

“Silence!” the Prefect said. He was old enough and his voice was deep enough to sound truly commanding. Though the children shivered and trembled, they quit speaking and eyed him warily. “Discipline,” he went on. “The foremost precept of the Battlemage. Your journey of learning starts now.”

“B-b-but… what’s going to happen to us?” a young god only a few years older than Loki asked.

“You are going to have your nightly bath.”

What did a bath have to do with discipline? Or was that harangue just about the talking out of turn? Loki stood silently and tried not to show his fear. He waited for a pair of burly Upperclassmen to come and grab him and pull him away for his own “bath.”

He was dragged away to a small room with a metal tub full of cold water. Apparently the Battlemage code of discipline training did not allow for dignity, as the Upperclassmen stripped him naked and dunked him in the tub without a word. They at least allowed him to scrub himself, handing him a cake of harsh soap. Burning with humiliation and where the soap touched his skin, Loki washed as swiftly as possible.

If he thought the indignities would end at a cold water bath overseen by two burly adolescent gods, he was wrong. Once he’d rinsed they grabbed him, dragged him out of the tub, and out of the room, still naked and dripping, down the stone corridor to a door.

“Wait a moment,” the shorter one said. “Not the common area. This one is special.”

“What’s so special about him?” the taller one said.

“He’s a prince. The administrators handed down orders that he gets a ‘private’ room.”

“I see. Well. The third one on the right in the second hall is open. We’ll toss him in there.”

“Good.”

And so they dragged him off down another hallway. As they walked, they spoke to him.

“Don’t think of this as a privilege, little Prince,” the shorter one said.

The taller one shook his head. “No, no. It’s much, much better in the common area. Warmer.”

“The heat from all the bodies, you see,” the shorter one said.

“But you don’t get to experience that because you’re a child of privilege, and the administrators don’t understand that privilege don’t work in the Battlemage program. They try to play up to the Very Important Fathers who make big donations each year that their sons attend by giving their spoiled prat sons little… ‘perks,’ see. And that may be fine in the school at large, but in the Battlemage program, that don’t fly, ‘cause you see, it makes discipline break down over time. And that makes the administrators angry.”

“But they don’t take it out on the spoiled prats, see, ‘cause that would make the Very Important Fathers angry,” the shorter one added. “So they put the boot to the rest of us.”

“So before you go getting bigheaded about your privileges, just bear in mind that, whether they mean it or not, every ‘perk’ the administrators give you actually makes things worse for you.”

“And if you act like a prat about it, we’ll make things so much worse for you that you’ll wish your Very Important Father never dropped his drawers and impregnated your Very Important Mother, little prince.”

This was already making it worse. Loki didn’t want to imagine his father with his trousers off, let alone… doing things… with his mother. He forced his mind down academic channels.

They dragged him to another door, pushed it open, and dragged him into a small bare stone chamber. It was completely empty except for a set of menacing manacles set high on the back wall. Loki saw them and, if he thought he was afraid before, that was nothing to the panic he felt now. He began to struggle in his captors’ arms.

“Do not fight.” Of course it was the deep, calm voice of his mentor, once more appearing just in the nick of time. “It will only be worse if you fight.”

“But they can’t do this,” Loki said, hating but being unable to help the note of whining in his voice.

“They can and they shall. You will earn your way down from the wall in time.”

Though he very much wanted to be strong and bear up under the fear and humiliation, Loki began to cry. He was, after all, still very young.

“Try to sleep. Morning call to prayer comes early,” his mentor said, as the Upperclassmen chained him by his wrists to the wall so that he dangled a good three feet above the floor. “One more thing you should know before I leave you: Tomorrow after regular classes, the school holds tryouts for the Murder Ball team. You are not expected to make the team, but everyone in the Battlemage program is expected to try out. There is no punishment for failure provided you give it your all.”

Murder Ball. A game considered old-fashioned due to the nature of some of its equipment, but still highly revered by Asgardians due to its sheer brutality. Loki shuddered.

“I don’t even know how to play,” he said.

His mentor shrugged. “What is there to know?” he said. “Get the ball, hold onto it for dear life, try your damnedest to get it to the other side of the field without getting killed. When you don’t have the ball, protect whoever has it or, if they’re on the opposing team, try to kill them.”

“I’m going to die,” Loki moaned.

“You won’t die. Sleep. You need it. It gets no easier, Battlemage.”

They all left him then, and Loki hung there by his sore wrists, his arms feeling as though they were being pulled from his shoulders, and cried, trying to be silent about it at the very least. If he managed to sleep at all, he must have dreamt of crying in his cell, for there was no difference in the night that he could determine when the morning call to prayer was sounded and two more burly Upperclassmen came to unchain him.

“On your knees, Battlemage,” one of them said. “Make peace with your ancestors.”

Loki dropped to his knees and bowed over his folded hands. His mind was blank. There were so many things he felt he needed to survive this that he did not know what to ask for. Finally, he simply decided to pray for courage. That seemed to be what he most lacked. They gave him a few minutes, then pulled him to his feet and shoved his uniform into his hands.

“Dress. Classes start in three hours. You have Study Hall until then.”

Study Hall, before classes even start. Loki assumed they were perfectly serious about the need to sit quietly and study, too. He dressed in a hurry and ran for the Study Hall.

He nervously pored over his coursebooks for the three hours, trying to ignore the empty growl of his stomach. No supper, no breakfast, and only a small bowl of dismal porridge to look forward to for lunch. He was going to be on a first-name basis with hunger. How did they expect him to concentrate on his studies?

Eventually, the bell for first period sounded, and Loki gathered his books and headed for class. He had been eager for this; now he dreaded it. His chance to study magic once seemed as his own unique path to glory: now it stood in his mind as a road straight to Helheim. He found a seat at the back of the classroom and kept his head down. He gave an anemic “Present” when his name was called during roll, but intended to call no further attention to himself. He took a battered wand from the stack the instructor passed around, and listened to his instructions, but had no intention of actively participating in any way beyond what he was forced to do.

“The conjuration of the three primary elements, fire, water, and electricity, is the most basic of magic spellcasting,” the instructor began. “All it takes, generally speaking, is the ability to cast magic in the first place, and perhaps a touch of willpower. You all have the ability to cast magic. That’s why you’re here. In truth, with enough willpower, enough dedication, enough time, the most untalented slag with no magical ability whatsoever could cast these spells. You, however, will cast them much better, and will do so much quicker. Hopefully, before the end of class today. You are no doubt familiar with the sight of master sorcerers casting fire and all without uttering a sound or using a wand. You will not be doing that. Apprentices use wands to focus their magic, and apprentices say spells aloud. It will be long, long years before you reach the level where you can dispense with those things. I won’t lie to you: some of you slags may never.”

He conjured a line of practice dummies and stood the class before them. “The most useful simple offensive spell in the mage’s arsenal is Asrir, the basic ball of fire. Not only will a good solid burst of them take out even a godly opponent, but it can be used to save your own foolish life from the elements if you are, say, lost in the frozen wastes of Niffleheim. Which, to judge from the looks of some of you, is a real possibility in the future. I will repeat it one more time: the incantation is Asrir. Well, go on, practice.”

Loki stood before his straw-stuffed practice dummy in a slump of misery. He could barely bring his wand up, and speaking the ancient word aloud proved too much for him. He was going to be punished for failing to obey his instructors. He struggled against his fear, trying to force the word past his frightened lips. _Asrir. ASRIR!_

A bright, huge fireball shot from the end of his wand and struck his dummy in the chest. It caught fire and burned until his instructor put it out with a blast of water from his own spellwork.

“Everyone stop, immediately,” the instructor said. “You, slag – Odinson, was it? I did not see your mouth moving before that fireball was cast. Are you some sort of ventriloquist?”

Still too frightened to speak, Loki shook his head.

“You cast that spell without speaking the incantation aloud.”

Now afraid he would be punished for showing off, Loki was too scared even to nod.

His instructor didn’t need him to. He turned Loki so that he faced the dummy once more. “Do it again,” he said.  
Terrified, Loki raised his wand, took a deep breath, and cast the spell, once more thinking the ancient word instead of saying it aloud. Once again, a bright, huge fireball shot out of his wand and struck the soggy, scorched scarecrow and was extinguished with another blast of water from the instructor. The instructor reached out and took his wand away.

“Now try it,” he said.

Loki’s hand shook, but he held it out, thought the incantation, and sure enough, another bright, huge fireball came flying out of his fingers, a little less perfectly round than the others, perhaps, but still hot and deadly.

“Congratulations, scug,” the instructor said. “You’ve just set a benchmark for the class that the others have no hope of reaching, and set yourself apart from them forever. No doubt they will revile you for setting the bar too high to attain, but that’s your problem. My purpose here is to make you learn sorcery at the height of your abilities, and yours are clearly higher than the average First Form slag.”

Loki could already feel the eyes upon him, filled with hate and jealousy. He would have given anything to trade with any one of the others at that moment. The instructor put a gag in his mouth and refused to give him back his wand. He forced him to keep practicing the fireball spell over and over until the end of class. The other students practiced, too, but very few produced much beyond a few matchstick flickers of flame before the bell sounded. The instructor was quite angry; apparently they hadn’t lived up to expectations, possibly intimidated by Loki’s much higher than average performance. Loki bolted for the next class as swiftly as he could. He got through the day by keeping his head down as best as he could. Fortunately his other classes did not offer practical lessons on this first day, but stuck to book study.

At the end of the day, long after his mid-afternoon bowl of porridge, hungry and still terribly frightened, he sat down on the edge of a low wall in the courtyard and hugged himself, trying to calm down, trying to control his thoughts, his fears, trying to marshal his courage.

“Your first day of studies went well.”

Loki looked up with no surprise. It was his mentor. “Not… that well,” he said in a weak voice.

His mentor shook his head. “That is not what I heard. I heard already you far outshine your classmates. This is good, though you may not think so now. Battlemages are destined for greatness among their peers. It is always best if they shine the brightest.”

“I don’t want to shine,” Loki said. “I want to go home.”

“Of course you do,” his mentor said. “We all did, in our first days. It passes. Soon, all there will be room for in your head is the study and the discipline.”

“That… doesn’t necessarily sound like an improvement. It sounds like a loss of self.”

His mentor let out a sustained breath. “I will be entering the army after this year, provided my grades are high enough to allow me to graduate,” he said at last. “Allow me to impart to you a bit of wisdom I have learned in my time as a Battlemage trainee before I leave you forever. It took me some time to learn it. If you are smart, you will learn it much quicker than I. Warriors take the glory. They are held up as the example of everything a god should aspire to be in life. But the truth of the matter is, they are fodder for our King’s war machine. They are fed lies about Valhalla so they will throw themselves pell-mell into battle without regard for their lives, and if they come back from the wars, they tend to come back broken. They hide it behind copious amounts of alcohol and whoring.”

Loki was horrified. He had never heard these things stated baldly before.

“If they are fodder, what are we?” he said, his voice squeaking nervously. No one had ever said a word about a Battlemage finding the glory of Valhalla, as far as he had ever heard.

“We are slaves,” his mentor said, in that same bald, matter-of-fact manner. “They fear our power, so they bind us with discipline that shackles our minds. We are bound to them, body and soul. We can accept it, be good slaves, fight for Asgard, and be treated reasonably well, or we can fight it and perish.”

“Why don’t we just run away?” Loki said, his voice rising in pitch and volume without his meaning it to.

“To where?” His mentor said, quite calmly. “To my homeland, where every day is a battle for survival quite as ferocious as this? To the mortal realm, to live in the stick and mud huts of the savage humans who will worship and fear you and perish before you have a chance to grow fond of them? Where will you go, little prince? Where _can_ you go, that the eye of your royal father cannot find you?”

And Loki was left speechless, knowing that there was nowhere he could go that his father would not track him down and drag him back to this brutal school, and he would be in disgrace besides for running away.

His mentor turned, but before he left this time he had one further word to say: “Murder Ball trials begin soon. You had better head to the stadium. You do not want to be late.”


	3. Chapter 3

Like any Murder Ball arena, the stadium was high-walled and open-roofed, with the stands on top of the walls overlooking the grassy field below. Loki stood below the imposing walls on the field with the other “hopefuls,” many of whom actually were, and he could feel them laughing at him. He was the smallest boy in the queue waiting to try out.

Murder Ball was similar to football, except there was no protective equipment, the referee did not call fouls, and it was played on “jet poles,” an antique bit of Asgardian technology that predated the personal flyers that most gods used these days. Jet poles were very much what they sounded like – metal sticks ranging from six to eight feet long, with small jet engines on one end. They made it possible for gods that could not fly (which was actually most of them; it was a rare gift) to do so with only excruciating discomfort. It was all they’d had for trillions of years, so they had once been popular. They were noisy, dangerous, hard to master, prone to breakdowns, could only be used by one person, hurt like Helheim to ride (especially if you were a god), and left ugly contrails behind them in the skies, so while scouts to other realms sometimes used them due to their speed and relatively small size (but high visibility – just such a scouting mission to Midgard had been spotted and wrought about numerous infamous witch trials, and the notion that witches rode flying broomsticks), they had pretty much fallen out of popular favor in modern times. But Murder Ball could not be played from the safety and comfort of a six-seater flyer, so a certain degree of popular favor remained.

Loki had never even seen a jet pole before. He was terrified that they expected him to ride one now, even taking out of account that large young gods would be coming after him, trying to knock him off.

One other piece of Murder Ball equipment was rather different to football: the ball. It did not fly, like the magical balls of J.K. Rowling’s Quidditch. No, it fell. Like a stone. Which was appropriate, because a stone is exactly what it was. A metric ton of white stone culled from the heart of Asgard, carved into what was a very large, very awkward ball. Even a small, relatively weak god could handle a ton, short or long, but tossed around from player to player, with everything else going on up there on those jet poles, it made the game unnecessarily complicated. Which is just how the spectators liked it. Loki felt so weak and trembly that he felt certain he would simply be crushed under the weight of the stone when they passed it to him for his tryout. He thought about simply dropping it when they threw it to him, but he remembered what his mentor said about there being punishment for anyone who did not actually try during tryouts.

He stood quietly, waiting for doom to befall him, and eventually he was called forward and the official handed him a stout six-foot jet pole with dual large jet engines on the end. Neither built for speed nor maneuverability, the model was not ideal for Murder Ball, and Loki could barely hold it up. He straddled it, adjusted uncomfortably, and kicked the engines into life as he had seen the others do. He was glad to have had the opportunity to observe a few previous competitors for that much at least, though watching them each get clobbered and limp or be carried off the field on gurneys did nothing for his confidence. The jet pole took off into the air at once, almost leaving him behind, but he managed to hold on by a miracle. He would have rather fallen off when he was still close to the ground.

He struggled to gain control of the pole. He heard laughter and felt his cheeks burning. Then a metric ton of stone struck him high in the chest. He let go of the pole and grabbed hold of the ball. He felt himself begin to fall and grabbed the pole again with one hand. His chest hurt, especially where the ball had driven his Battlemage pin into his flesh. But he held on, as best as he could with one arm.

“You might want to try riding sidesaddle, Little One,” someone shouted. “Least until you become a God.”

The jibe was meant to be cruel but it served to focus him. An entire team of grown and mostly-grown gods was bearing down on him, meaning to take the ball from him by whatever means necessary. He fought to turn his monstrous pole to get away from them. Surprisingly, it obeyed him. He discovered that by applying pressure with his knees more than using his hand, he could force the balky thing off its course. Then he could use his hand to give it a yank in another direction, allowing him to swerve. And he was too young to be titillated by the implications, god of mischief or not. He dodged out of the way of the crowd of bruisers bearing down on him and dashed off toward the end of the field.

They chased him. Most of them had their own jet poles, sleek, agile models that cost a lot of Borrsons and were built specially for the game. Loki didn’t stand a chance of outrunning them. So he did the only thing he could, and tried to outsmart them, with reckless turns and dodges and the occasional barrel roll. This kept them from tracking him, kept them from hitting him, and even, to some extent, kept him out of their sight. It almost worked.

Until…

Barreling up from behind the pack, straight out of nowhere, came – his mentor. Ignoring all Loki’s tricky maneuvering, the young god with the strange orange eyes seemed not to care where Loki was, and went straight for where he would be by the time they would intersect. Loki had no time to get out of his way. He braced himself against the inevitable collision. Surprisingly, it did not hurt. Probably because he lost consciousness immediately.


	4. Chapter 4

Loki swam up out of the blackness an inch at a time. There was still a haze over his vision when he finally blinked his eyes open. And so his mentor, leaning over him where he lay – wherever that was – looked even more mystical than usual.

“You were out for a long time, Battlemage,” the young god said. “I was beginning to fear I hit you too hard.”

“Is that a fear you’re supposed to have, when playing Murder Ball?” Loki said. His own voice sounded very far away to his ears.

His mentor smiled, just a little – another there and gone expression Loki couldn’t swear to having actually seen. “No, but I had less intention of killing you than I might have done under ordinary circumstances. You do know that gods rarely die playing Murder Ball, correct? Injuries are common, death is almost unheard of.”

“Let’s see if you’re so confident of that when you’re as small as I,” Loki said.

“You’ll get bigger,” his mentor said. “And no matter how small you may be, you managed to impress the team Captain. When you’re older and have a bit of size to go along with your brains and daring, I wager you’ll make the team.”

“Oh. Great,” Loki said, with no enthusiasm.

“Think of it this way, Battlemage: tonight, you sleep in the Infirmary rather than chained to the wall in the Battlemage dungeon. Consider it a treat for your efforts.”

“And try not to think about the fact that I’m in terrible pain, all over my body,” Loki said, closing his eyes.

“That will pass. You did well today. Your father must be proud.”

His father. Loki wondered whether Odin would be proud of his school performance. He showed so little regard for the study of sorcery, Loki did not know if exceeding expectations at even this most prestigious of magical academies would please him. Of course, there were dangers associated with the study of magic, Loki knew that, but Odin never seemed overly concerned with danger, and if Loki was an Adept, then he needed the instruction to guard him against the worst of those dangers. Right?

Perhaps Loki’s extended silence pushed his mentor to speak. “Things will get better,” he said in his calm voice. “I know it does not seem that way right now. You are in a hard place, little Battlemage. Things will get better. Just toe the line.”

“You didn’t tell me you were on the Murder Ball team,” Loki said, just to have something to say.

“You did not ask. But you might have guessed; the team is composed predominately of Upperclassmen from the Battlemage program. The school at large only teaches the art of thinking. The Battlemage program alone teaches us to fight.”

“With magic.”

“Not magic alone. We are taught to fight with any advantage we can take. You will see. You will be good at it. Already you have a head for strategy, which is a rare thing in an Asgardian but crucial for a Battlemage. The army relies on us to keep the Warriors safe as they blitz the enemy. We have to outthink the enemy. We even have to outthink our own generals, at times. We are the shields of the Asgardian army, and the brains.”

“You said earlier that we were the slaves,” Loki said.

“That does not negate our value. They fear us, because we are powerful, and because we are dangerous, so they impose control over us. But they need us. Never forget that. It is the only power you have.”

“I know you said it will get better, but the future looks pretty bleak to me right now,” Loki said.

“I know. But it will get better. Or you will stop caring. I do not pretend to know which, precisely, happens.”

Loki struggled to sit up and a healer frowned at him and came over to push him back down. “But what if it doesn’t? What if it doesn’t get better? What if I don’t stop caring?”

“The ones who don’t adjust are the ones who fail and are sent home in disgrace,” his mentor said. “As I said before, you will have to decide for yourself whether that seems to be a better future than simply accepting your fate as a Battlemage.”

Accept or live in disgrace. No choice, really. If he were not the son of Odin, he could perhaps leave Asgard, forge a new life for himself in one of the other realms… but as a prince, he had no choice to make. His father would most likely sooner see him dead than in disgrace. He drew a shuddering breath.

“I will… try to accept,” he said. “The sooner the better, yes?”

“Yes,” his mentor said. “The sooner the better.”


End file.
